A cyclist zips by the construction site of Anaheim's new transportation hub. JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A Surfliner train, pulling away from the Anaheim train station, passes the new construction of the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Construction is under way on the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, a 67,000-square-foot terminal that will provide access to Amtrak, Metrolink, buses, taxis and perhaps a high-speed railway. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The steel structure of the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center is beginning to take form. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center is beginning to take form. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A construction worker is seen among the steel structure of the new Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The Big A looms in the background of the construction site. JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

ANAHEIM – City officials have overstated by thousands the number of passengers likely to use a soaring new transportation hub being built near Angel Stadium at a total cost of more than $220 million, a review of project documents shows.

City projections suggest that 10,000 trips a day will start or end at the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center, or ARTIC, when it opens next year. But those estimates rely on bus lines that exist only on paper, an airport shuttle shelved in 2011 and optimistic assumptions for Metrolink and Amtrak demand, according to records and interviews.

The actual number appears to be closer to 5,000. And that counts travelers both as they come and go, a typical measure for the transportation industry, one that double-counts anyone making a round trip.

City officials say the new station will improve regional transportation from the day it opens and provide needed space for high-speed rail in the years to come. They describe the station, with its translucent shell more than three stories tall, as a landmark for Orange County and the future of transportation.

“We're not building a building necessarily for today,” Anaheim Public Works Director Natalie Meeks said. “We're building a building for the next 50 years.”

The ARTIC station has been planned for years with an eye toward high-speed rail and the tens of thousands of passengers that the city projects would take a bullet train to and from Anaheim. But it will take almost a generation for high-speed rail to reach Orange County's most populous city, according to the rail authority's most-recent business plan.

Anaheim has used an opening-day promise of 10,000 riders to woo companies that might provide maintenance, advertising or other support for ARTIC, records show. As recently as May, potential bidders were told in a PowerPoint presentation that they could expect 10,330 daily riders from the day the station opens.

A big part of that number – more than 4,000 daily riders – would come from special express bus lines and a Fly-Away shuttle to connect Orange County residents to Los Angeles International Airport, according to city documents. But none of that exists right now, and there's no guarantee it will when ARTIC opens about a year from now.

Orange County's long-range transportation plan calls for express bus lines; but none that would serve the Anaheim station have been budgeted into reality, much less scheduled to start service, records show. And the idea of an airport shuttle hasn't been seriously discussed since 2011, said Marshall Lowe, a spokesman for Los International Airport.

Meeks said that at least some of the riders who would take the rapid bus lines are already riding standard buses that will use ARTIC and should still be counted. But she said no ridership studies have been done to determine how many of them there are.

The city numbers also suggest that around 3,000 passengers a day will arrive or depart from ARTIC on Metrolink and Amtrak trains. That's nearly 1,000 more than Anaheim's current station sees on any given day, statistics show. And even that assumes that every Metrolink passenger who departs from Anaheim eventually comes back on a round trip, and should be counted twice.

The city also included in its number special promotional trains for Angels and Ducks games, which have seen strong ridership in recent years. But those trains run only on limited schedules on game days.

Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait declined to speak in detail about the numbers. He abstained from voting on ARTIC's construction contract because his company has done work for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which is providing most of the station's funding. But he said he supports the project.

ARTIC was conceived as much more than a Metrolink station and a bus stop. It was going to hum with high-speed bullet trains and even a “super speed” shuttle to Ontario's airport, all within walking distance of 9,500 new high-rise homes, according to a 2005 agreement between Anaheim and the OCTA.

Only about a fifth of those homes were built before the recession put Anaheim's hopes for an urban Platinum Triangle on hold. And high-speed rail has become mired in politics and questions about the billions of dollars it would cost to build. The state's High-Speed Rail Authority doesn't expect a bullet train to pull into Anaheim until at least 2029.

When – or if – that day comes, Anaheim expects high-speed rail to deliver about 32,900 new passenger trips to ARTIC every day. That would also drive up ridership on a streetcar that Anaheim wants to build from ARTIC, through the Platinum Triangle, to Disneyland and the Convention Center, according to planning documents.

Until then, the city expects ARTIC use to peak at around 15,500 trips on any given day, counting both arrivals and departures, records show.

“If it looks to you like we're building an awful lot of building for not a lot of ridership, you're not missing anything,” said county Supervisor Shawn Nelson, a longtime critic of the project who serves on the OCTA board. His district includes ARTIC. Everyday commuters will now have to navigate a “Crystal Cathedral of transit portals,” he said, rather than hop a train or bus at a street stop.

“It's not like a flight, where you've got a two-hour layover,” he said.

Plans for ARTIC show three stories of lobbies, ticketing counters and waiting areas, with space for shops or restaurants, beneath a half-shell canopy made of glassy plastic. Crews broke ground on it last fall and have begun constructing the building's steel skeleton just east of Angel Stadium.

The station's total cost comes to around $221 million, including land, engineering, construction and improvements to nearby streets, according to city progress reports. Most of the funding is coming from Orange County's half-cent sales tax, approved by voters for such transportation improvements, bolstered by tens of millions of dollars in state and federal grants.

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